orientalcairocit00sladuoft

A Drive Round Cairo 15
worth a visit. They are merely handsome edifices in the
style of French or English public buildings, which are surrounded
with dull gardens. This is a portion of Cairo which
the visitor may safely neglect. But it takes very little time
to make your cabman drive round these public buildings
of the Administration in the order in which I have given
them.
I have taken these two quarters first, to get them out of
the way before proceeding to the Arabic quarters centring
round the Citadel, which fall into the natural scope of my
book.
II.—ORIENTAL CAIRO
IV, From the Opera House round the Esbekiya Gardens
to the Ataba-el'Khadra ; Scenes of Native Life
Visitors wishing to drive round Oriental Cairo should start
at the Place de I'Opera, say, from the statue of Ibrahim
Fasha, the famous fighting son of Mehemet AH, who had so
much to do with Egypt's throwing off the Ottoman yoke.
Instead of driving direct to the Ataba-el-Khadra, the square
from which nearly all the tramways of Cairo start, he
should drive right round the Esbekiya Gardens, for in the
road on the other side, called the Sharia El-Genaina, he will
see much native life, the best donkey boys' restaurants, the
best street stalls.
The Ataba-el-Khadra, in the angle of the Mixed Tribunals
and the Post Office, is the best place to observe another kind
of native life. The Arabs are extremely fond of using tramways
and omnibuses, and take them as seriously as we take
catching a train. As they are bustling-in they are waited
on by a swarm of vendors of tartlets, Turkish delight, seditious
newspapers, and tinkery and turnery, not to mention the
swarm of water-sellers, lemonade-sellers and shoeblacks, or
the donkey-boys and the arabeah-drivers, who deafen you
with their noise, and the forage camels and stone-carts who
jostle into everybody.